Marketers have done well by pairing technological advancements with the best AI tools—such as personalization based on browsing history. This trend should continue with the new era of global chatbots. When companies move toward marketing by chat, they need to use this channel wisely or risk damaging their customer relationships. As technology advances, user expectations rise.

Localization & Globalization

EContent got the chance to talk with some of the digital content industry's best and brightest at the Gilbane Digital Content Conference 2017. In this installment of Voices of EContent, we asked these leaders in their fields to tell us what trend they were most excited about in 2018. We heard about content marketing, personalized video, augemented reality and machine learning, automation in translation and localization, and more.

Smartling, a translation technology and service, announced a new industry awards program that recognizes freelance translators and language service providers (LSPs) for their translator excellence. Coupled with Smartling's Translation Management Platform, human translators deliver indispensable services that help global brands connect with customers around the world in their native languages.

I've lost count of how many times I've heard this sentence: "My local reviewer is bilingual!" People use this to justify why and how someone has been identified to review and sign off on localized content. Here are three reasons why linguists are invaluable resources to check localized content effectiveness, implement actual corrections, and collaborate with business experts in order to complete an in-depth and unbiased review.

The role and impact of people in digital globalization comes to play in many ways. People and processes come first. This fact is a major incentive to lead the globalization of content and products like business founders would, even when leaders in that area did not initiate such efforts and took such activities over from other people. Adopting an ad hoc mindset matters as much as defining strategies to grow internationally.

Our judges are an integral part of making the EContent 100 list happen, but they rarely get an opportunity to talk directly to our readers. In order to get an idea of what was on their minds during this year's judging, we asked them one simple question: "What was the breakout trend of the past year from your vantage point in the industry, and how do you see it evolving next year?" These are their answers.

Like most buzzwords, "agility" has taken over during discussions regarding time, cost, and process effectiveness. It covers flexibility, scalability, capacity, and speed among other expectations. At the very least, it is useful to pinpoint characteristics that content must contain to be effective anywhere in the digital age. Agility fits nicely in any expansion plan and in any effort to shape processes to handle large amounts of content.

Smartling, a translation technology and service provider, released findings of a new study that reveals content localization is a top priority for global brands, with 94% of marketers surveyed in the U.S. and Europe citing plans to increase spending on content localization in the coming year.

In order to survive, everything must evolve. The EContent 100 list of companies that matter most in the digital content industry is no exception. Every year during the voting process, we see how the changing list reflects the way the larger industry is developing. In 2017, a couple of trends emerged. The first, is the importance of artificial intelligence (AI), which is probably obvious to anyone in the content business. The second is the increasing importance of digital asset management (DAM). Next year, DAM will need its own category, but this year, we did our best to honor its contributions to the industry within our existing framework.

Agreeing to name content globalization properly is often a recurring issues and surprising challenge when setting the appropriate stage and sustaining it over time. A lack of convergence in this area often comes from the diversity of definitions that exist, as well as individual opinions on how to put the concept of globalization into practice.

Lingotek, the Translation Network announced that the Lingotek - Inside Magento extension for translation is now available on the Magento Marketplace. As a technology partner, Lingotek helps Magento users increase their international presence with an automated, easy-to-use translation integration.

Lingotek, the Translation Network, announced a strategic global partnership with Connect Worldwide (CWW) to deliver translation and localization services to the travel industry. CWW is a global sales, marketing, and digital services company with a focus on international market expansion and revenue development.

It is sometimes useful to reiterate facts that are taken for granted—or expectations that are may seem obvious—in order to remind some people about the basic imperatives of content globalization. After decades of global expansion, it is surprising to hear about misconceptions or assumptions that may lead global products or services to an unexpected hall of shame. Before talking about the finish line it is necessary to define the start line and the distance to run.

Econsultancy, the digital marketing research firm, in partnership with Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. a digital communications company, released a new study titled "International Content: Monetizing Global Content Assets and Measuring Success." Based on a survey of more than 270 executive-level marketers across a variety of international businesses, the report examines the role of international content in driving global expansion, while improving customer experience (CX) and increasing revenue.

Sponsored Guest Commentary

From the smallest start-ups to multinational corporations, an increasing number of companies are now using voiceovers to bring credibility, closeness and a human touch to their corporate communication materials. The right human voice is able to reach out and engage culturally diverse audiences in a dialogue. What's more, voiceovers offer countless possibilities for multilingual adaptation of prime content.

Smartling, a translation technology and service provider, now offers a fully-automated, data-driven approach to measuring translation quality across localized content. Smarting says its Quality Confidence Score (QCS), a proprietary machine-learning algorithm that aggregates data gathered from billions of translated words processed by Smartling's platform, is a milestone for the translation industry, leveraging data and machine learning to predict and improve translation quality.

Whenever digital globalization is initiated or accelerated the testing stage is a critical milestone to certify that global content delights target audiences and thrives in any target market. This may sound like any other testing effort regardless of scope and nature. Yet, it must be considered holistically. Leading it as a mainstream activity and prioritizing sanity checks are two typical pitfalls that put globalization testing off track and off budget. A couple of guidelines should be kept in mind to avoid ending up with unnecessary iterations and to generate cost effective takeaways.

Succeeding in content translation puts you in a position to create compelling experiences among consumers across the globe. However, it is sometimes misunderstood and diluted within globalizing organizations, which leads some content creators and owners to misuse it and make it less effective than it should be. Here are six steps to help you on your journey.

Smartling, a translation technology and service innovator, has deepened the integration of its Translation Management Platform with the Yext Knowledge Engine through a Smartling app in the Yext App Directory, enabling businesses to translate and localize their online listings seamlessly, from basic business information to deep content like promotions and product information across the web.

During recent discussions with global product and content leaders, and language service suppliers, I noticed that a recurring topic still made relationships between these suppliers and their clients less productive than expected. They can't seem to agree on the answers to a couple of questions. What are language services and how do these services contribute to global business in general and digital experiences in particular?

Sharing a car, an apartment, or content is now the norm. Whether for free or paid, sharing goods and services has become more than just another trend. The same is true for the globalization of digital content. The business processes underlying content globalization are subject to efforts to increase cost- and time-effectiveness, and deliver faster results. However, this poses challenges that must be framed to avoid turning distributed engagement and empowerment into fragmentation and dilution.

From the first time a customer or prospect engages with any external-facing facet of a business, that CX is being tested. And while many organizations are laser-focused on making a sale to drive revenue, delivering a positive experience must go far beyond the initial transaction. Read any marketing publication today and you will find information on how to address the customer's needs before an actual purchase is made, but few touch on one of the most important parts of the overall customer journey: the post-purchase customer experience.

Diversity is a key value in digital globalization. Regardless of industry--or globalization maturity stage--diversity cannot live and thrive without holistic inclusion (a major enabler of content globalization). When it comes to the mind of global leaders and performers, holistic inclusion fuels a number of aspects of global content operations ranging from processes to standards and from planning to execution. As a matter of fact, inclusion underlies success all along the way--provided it is embraced from the outset of global expansion and growth.

Cloudwords, a software provider for global content localization, announced new platform functionality to simplify the process of localizing Adobe InDesign documents. The new features allow Cloudwords users to review and edit translated text in InDesign page layouts within Cloudwords OneReview, the platform's in-context review capability, without the need to purchase or learn how to use InDesign software.